Diana Rigg
Diana Rigg in 2006
Born	(1938-07-20) 20 July 1938 (age 73) Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England, UK
Spouse	Menachem Gueffen (1973–76, divorced) Archibald Stirling (1982–90, divorced)
Children	Rachael Stirling

Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE (born 20 July 1938) is an English actress. She is probably best known for her portrayals of Emma Peel in The Avengers and Countess Teresa di Vicenzo in the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. She is considered a sex symbol and an icon of 1960s feminism.^[1][2]

Biography[link]

Early life and education[link]

Rigg was born in Doncaster, South Yorkshire^[3] to Louis Rigg and Beryl Hilda Helliwell (1908–1981); her father was a railway engineer who had been born in Yorkshire. Between the ages of two months and eight years Rigg lived in Bikaner, India, where her father was employed as a railway executive.^[3] Rigg speaks fluent Hindi. She was then sent to a boarding school, the Moravian School in Fulneck, near Pudsey. She disliked her boarding school, where she felt like a fish out of water, but she believes that Yorkshire played a greater part in shaping her character than India did. She trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.^[4]

Career[link]

Her career in film, television and the theatre has been wide-ranging, including roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1959 and 1964. Her professional debut was in The Caucasian Chalk Circle in 1955, aged 17.

Rigg appeared in the British 1960s television series The Avengers (1965–67) playing the secret agent Mrs Emma Peel in 51 episodes. Rigg auditioned for the role of Emma Peel on a whim, without ever having seen the programme. Although she was hugely successful in the series, she disliked the lack of privacy that it brought. She also did not like the way that she was treated by the Associated British Corporation (ABC). After a dozen episodes she discovered that she was being paid less than a cameraman. For her second season she held out for a pay rise from £150 a week to £450,^[5] but there was still no question of her staying for a third year. Patrick Macnee, her co-star in the series, noted that Rigg had later told him that she considered Macnee and her driver to be her only friends on the set.^[6]

On the big screen she became a Bond girl in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), playing Tracy Bond, James Bond's only wife. She said she took the role with the hope that she would become well known in America.^[7] Throughout the filming of the movie, there were rumours that the experience was not a happy one, owing to a personality clash with Bond actor George Lazenby. The rumors may have arisen from a reporter witnessing her say "I'm having garlic for lunch George [Lazenby] I hope you are!" before a love scene between the two. However, both Rigg and Lazenby have denied the claims, and both wrote off the garlic comment as a joke.

She also returned to the stage. A nude scene with Keith Michell during Abelard and Heloise in 1970 led to a notorious description of her as 'built like a brick basilica with insufficient flying buttresses', by the acerbic critic John Simon.^[8] (Simon's line is often rendered incorrectly, with "mausoleum" in place of "basilica.") Rigg took leading roles in premiere productions of two Tom Stoppard plays, Dorothy Moore in Jumpers (1972) and Ruth Carson in Night and Day (1978). Her other films from this period include The Assassination Bureau (1969), The Hospital (1971), Theatre of Blood (1973), In This House of Brede (1975) (based on the book by Rumer Godden) and A Little Night Music (1977).

She appeared as the title character in The Marquise (1980), a television adaptation of play by Noël Coward. In 1982, she appeared in a musical called Colette, based on the life of the French writer and created by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, but it closed during an American tour en route to Broadway. In 1986, she took a leading role in the West End production of Stephen Sondheim's musical Follies.

In the 1980s, after reading stinging reviews of a stage performance she had given, Rigg was inspired to compile the worst theatrical reviews she could find into a tongue-in-cheek (and best-selling) compilation, entitled No Turn Unstoned. In 1981 she appeared in a Yorkshire Television production of Hedda Gabler in the title role, and as Lady Holiday in the film The Great Muppet Caper (1981). The next year, she received acclaim for her performance as Arlena Stuart Marshall in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun.

She appeared as Regan, the king's treacherous second daughter, in a Granada Television production of King Lear (1983), which starred Laurence Olivier in the title role. She costarred with Denholm Elliot in a television version of Dickens Bleak House (BBC, 1985), and played the Wicked Queen in the Cannon adaptation of Snow White (1987). In 1989, she played Helena Vesey in Mother Love for the BBC; her portrayal of an obsessive mother who was prepared to do anything, even murder, to keep control of her son won Rigg the 1989 BAFTA for best actress. Also in 1989, Rigg appeared in the BBC adaptation of Alice Thomas Ellis' Unexplained Laughter, alongside Elaine Paige.

In 1986, she presented the Scottish Television series Held in Trust, which focused on the work of the National Trust for Scotland and some of its treasures.

In the 1990s, she had triumphs with roles at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, including Medea in 1993 (for which she received the Best Actress Tony Award), Mother Courage in 1995 and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1996. On television she has appeared as Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (winning an Emmy Award in the process), as well as the mother-in-law in the PBS production Moll Flanders, and as the amateur detective Mrs. Bradley in The Mrs Bradley Mysteries. In 1992, she also played Mme. Colbert Chief Vendeuse to the fashion house of Dior in Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris.

In the BBC series The Mrs Bradley Mysteries, first aired in 2000, she played Gladys Mitchell's detective, Dame Beatrice Adela Le Strange Bradley, an eccentric old woman who worked for Scotland Yard as a pathologist. The series was not a critical success and did not return for a second season.

Rigg in the premiere of her 1973 NBC television program.

From 1989 until 2003, she hosted the PBS television series Mystery!, taking over from Vincent Price, her co-star from Theatre of Blood. Her TV career in America has been varied; anomalously she starred in her own sitcom Diana in 1973, but it was not successful.

Rigg has continued to perform on stage; in 2004, she appeared as Violet Venable in Sheffield Theatres' production of Tennessee Williams's play Suddenly Last Summer. This enjoyed a successful national tour. In 2006, she appeared at Wyndham's Theatre in London's West End in a drama entitled Honour which had a limited but successful run. In 2007, she appeared as Huma Rojo in the Old Vic's production of All About My Mother, adapted by Samuel Adamson and based on the film of the same title directed by Pedro Almodóvar. She appeared in 2008 in The Cherry Orchard at the Chichester Festival Theatre, returning there in 2009 to star in Noël Coward's Hay Fever.

Although she does not consider herself a singer, her performances in A Little Night Music, Follies and other stage musicals have been well received by audiences and critics alike. She made a highly memorable appearance on the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show in 1975, in which she played Nell Gwynne in a musical pastiche, joining Eric and Ernie to sing “How Could You Believe Me When I Said I Loved You When You Know I've Been A Liar All My Life?”.

She also appeared in the second season of Ricky Gervais' hit comedy, Extras, alongside Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe, and in the 2006 film, The Painted Veil.

Personal life[link]

Rigg lived with Philip Saville.^[when?] Her marriage to Menachem Gueffen, an Israeli painter, lasted from 1973 until they divorced in 1976. She was married to Archibald Stirling, a theatrical producer and former officer in the Scots Guards, from 1982 until they divorced in 1990. The marriage broke up when Stirling had an affair with actress Joely Richardson.^[4] With Stirling, Rigg has a daughter, actress Rachael Stirling, who was born in 1977.^[9]

Rigg was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1988 and a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in 1994.

Rigg is a Patron of International Care & Relief and was for many years the public face of the charity's child sponsorship scheme. She was also Chancellor of the University of Stirling,^[4] being succeeded by James Naughtie when her ten year term of office ended on 31 July 2008.

Michael Parkinson, who first interviewed Rigg in 1972, described her as the most desirable woman he ever met who "radiated a lustrous beauty".^[1]

Filmography[link]